The following relates generally to a system and method for facilitating ease of use of a Web page user interface.
In the art, Web pages are typically used to display and/or provide a means for a user to access one or more of services, products, information, data, news, functionality, and/or the like (individually and collectively referred to hereinafter as “content”) that is made available via a Web site. Generally, the user interfaces associated with Web pages are designed without regard to what content customers will actually use. Thus, it is not uncommon for a user interface of a Web page to present to a user content that will only be relevant to a small percentage of visitors to a Web site.
To ease access to content offered via a Web site, some systems utilize “liquid design,” that is, a Web page is scaled at a resolution and size so as to fit the content of the Web page into the horizontal constraints of a browser window. To this end, the Web page is displayed with the content within the Web page being wrapped down the screen. As the browser window size is increased, less wrapping occurs and the content of the Web page expands to fill the full width of the browser window. While “liquid design” thus provides a means to facilitate access to content, it will be evident that “liquid design” fails to address issues with respect to relevancy of the content to various users.
For the purpose of presenting to an individual user within a Web page content that is supposed to be more relevant to the needs of that particular, individual user, U.S. Pat. No. 6,959,319 describes customizing a Web page by sensing a user's access of objects included in the Web page or objects that are specified by the user in advance. More particularly, the described system requires that the user register his/her browser with a proxy server that sits between the browser of the user and a Web site. When the user then accesses a designated Web site, the proxy server intercepts Web pages downloaded from the designated Web site and uses a user profile to filter the downloaded Web pages prior to presentation of the downloaded Web pages within the browser of the user. As will be appreciated, this described system and method for customizing Web pages to particular, individual users has numerous disadvantages including, but not limited to, being costly to implement and being burdensome to users in at least its configuration requirements.
A system and method having similar disadvantages is also described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,014,638 which likewise functions to dynamically customize content and presentation of content for individual users by monitoring and recording navigational choices of that individual user.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for facilitating ease of use of a Web page user interface which overcomes at least the disadvantages above noted.